Post by Don PhillipsonPost by SolomonWhttps://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631462-700-the-real-roots-of-early-city-states-may-rip-up-the-textbooks/
What are your thoughts on this quote from the article, it does not sound
right to me.
"But the vast majority of people had no contact with states as late as the
end of the 15th century – Europe’s middle ages. These people survived on a
mix of agriculture and foraging, much like the inhabitants of those early
settlements on the plains of Mesopotamia before 4000 BC"
This is a book review. The reviewer seems to ignore the distinction between
personal authority (as of a tribal chief, a pharoah or a count in mediaeval
Europe) and the non-personal authority of an institution (like a church) or
a
secular state (solemnized by the Treaties of Westphalia, 1648.)
AFAIK, an average pharaoh was not running all over Egypt exercising his "personal authority": there was a sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus making pharaoh's power quite "institutional" and not dependable upon personality.
Count in medieval Europe also was (at least initially) an "institutional" figure: a part of the administrative hierarchy of a feudal kingdom. Of course, later this title evolved into a (semi-)independent ruler but, again, it was hardly a personal thing.
Post by Don PhillipsonIn European history, "feudal" is the usual word
It is not quite usual and it is hardly truly "historical":
"There is no commonly accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least among scholars. The adjective feudal was coined in the 17th century, and the noun feudalism, often used in a political and propaganda context, was not coined until the 19th century...". It seems that the 1st attempt of a "scientific" definition was made only in 1939.
Post by Don Phillipsonfor the structures of
authority
between the Merovingian kings and 1648.
If "feudalism" is definition of a social structure then all positions within its framework are hardly "personal": they have only as much power as delegated by a higher level of a hierarchy.
Post by Don PhillipsonFeudalism expresses the duty
and discipline of the person (or family), superseded only later by that of
the
state (or church or party or race.)
"In a classic definition by François-Louis Ganshof (1944),[3] feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs,[3] though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment related only to the "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word".
A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's Feudal Society (1939),[10] includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but those of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and those living by their labour, most directly the peasantry bound by manorialism; this order is often referred to as "feudal society", echoing Bloch's usage.
Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974)[5] and Susan Reynolds's Fiefs and Vassals (1994),[6] there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
Post by Don PhillipsonThe word is not mentioned in the book review.
It seems that the modern historians tend not to use it.
Post by Don PhillipsonInstead the authors emphasize
their surprise at archaecaeological discoveries of building and agricultural
sophistication in 9000 BC.
And express admiration with the ecologically-friendly Bushmen.